A hundred visions and revisions

 The background of Juneteenth according to white Americans:

1.  "Today is a good day to remember:  Christianity is the faith and America is the place slavery came to die."  (Josh Hawley)   

2.  Lincoln freed the slaves on January 1, 1863.  Game over.

3.  Constitutional amendments 13 through 15 outlawed slavery, gave all men the vote and abolished racial discrimination.  Game officially over.

4.  Brown v. Topeka Board of Education ended segregated schools.  

5.  Martin Luther King, Jr., had a dream.

6.  Barack Obama's presidency meant that racism was done.

7.  What more do you people want?  Why aren't you grateful?

"I have not heard one white Democrat apologize for slavery.  I haven't heard any Black person say 'thank you' to the over 300,000 white men who died to free those Black slaves."  (Dave from Texas, calling the toll-free number for Republicans on C-SPAN).

The present is in trouble because we can't agree on the past.  What's more, a lot of us don't want to.  Nearly 200,000 Black men served in the Union army and navy during the Civil War.  As a white person I choose to thank them.

Try this, Josh and Dave:  "I can never acknowledge the right of slavery.  I will bow down to no deity however worshipped by professing Christians...whose footstool is the crushed necks of the groaning millions, and who rejoices in the resoundings of the tyrant's lash and the cries of his tortured victims."  (Thaddeus Stevens)

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Imagine, if you will, that it's 1931 and there's a recording of Al Capone telling an associate, "Yeah, I ordered the hit on Moran's gang in that garage.  What are you gonna do about it?"  Confronted with the recording, Capone went on radio to insist on his right to order it.  "He was gonna move on my territory.  You don't do that.  Eliot Ness is a stroonz.  He can't touch me."  Forget the tax case, warm up Old Sparky.  Did Illinois ever have the electric chair?  I don't know.  I only know law enforcement was simpler in those days.  Of course, Big Al never ran for president.

Magistrate Judge Bruce Reinhart, who signed the search warrant for Mar a Lago last summer, can expect more MAGA abuse -- he issued an order barring Trump and co-defendant Walt Nauta from revealing any evidence from the classified documents.  Nauta will certainly obey the court, as he doesn't spend the day posting incoherent all-caps rants on social media.  Trump, on the other hand, probably won't be able to help himself.  What happens when Jane Scratchcard violates a court order?  Incarceration, house arrest, an ankle monitor?  That whole "equal justice under the law" principle could get quite a workout.

Trump decided to put aside his objections and submit to a live interview on Fox News.  Actually, it was more of an hour-long confession.  He still can't turn over documents he's holding because he hasn't found time in the last eighteen months to sort through them.  Some of his golf shirts may be in those boxes.  By the time you have your neck hairs dyed yellow and sculpted into a pompadour, apply a double coat of orange clown makeup, get a manicure, post twenty or thirty unhinged rants about Jack Smith's wife and address a torchlight rally in Mulebugger, Tennessee, another day has got behind you.  Where does the time go?  My favorite exchange:

Trump:  These boxes were interspersed with all sorts of things.  Golf shirts, clothing, pants, shoes, there were many things!

Brett Baier:  Iran war plans?

Trump:  Not that I know of.

And he complained about the FBI making a mess on his beautiful, classy carpet.  I don't see any shoes.

 Baier displayed remarkable courage in his final interview with Trump, slipping in the information that yes, he did lose the 2020 election, and confronting him with a list of the people he hired when they were "the best people," before they turned into gutless idiots who failed to come up to his standards.  And Trump interjected that nobody watches Fox anymore because it is "unfair."  By now he'll be congratulating himself on the extremely high ratings his interview got.  If you still expect consistency, you're the hobgoblin with a small mind.  As Baier now knows, it's like dancing with a jellyfish.

Add David Weiss, US attorney for Delaware, to the long list of Trump disappointments.  Weiss, appointed by Trump in 2017, has agreed to a plea deal with Hunter Biden on charges of non-payment of income tax and lying on a gun permit application.  "The corrupt Biden DOJ just cleared up hundreds of years of criminal liability by giving Hunter Biden a mere 'traffic ticket,'" he raved.  "Our system is BROKEN!"  I was thinking that myself.  Paying taxes late (or not at all) should be a capital offense, unless you're Trump and then it means you're smart.  But why didn't the corrupt Biden DOJ replace Weiss in 2021?  Quite the oversight in Biden's home state.

The Prado has a number of major works by Hieronymus Bosch which were acquired as soon as the paint dried by King Philip II of Spain.  (He was very religious.)  Among them is The Garden of Earthly Delights, a triptych from 1490-1510 depicting the Garden of Eden on one side panel, Hell on the other and a whole lot of whoopee in the middle.  Scientists have devised glasses which track the length of time viewers look at each part and, surprise!, it's Hell that holds their attention.  I could have told them that.  The Inferno is the most compelling part of Dante's poem, too.  Love it, fear it or just wonder about it, hell is present in everybody's idea of the afterlife and it's a lot more fun than angels with harps.